Summary

Sends photograph.

THH wishes he could write the popular zoology but writing is a boring and slow process when he is not interested, and he is overburdened with lectures.

Summary

Gratified by AG’s praise of "Climbing plants".

Thanks for Specularia seed.

Summary

Sends papers with comments. Convinced that the Aru pig is a species peculiar to New Guinea fauna, not a domestic animal that ran wild.

Admires CD’s paper ["Three forms of Lythrum", Collected papers 2: 106–31].

Summary

Discusses self-fertilisation in bee and spider orchids. Asks JTM to conduct experiment.

Comments on plates [see J. T. Moggridge’s contribution to Flora of Mentone and winter flora of the Riviera, including the coast from Marseilles to Genoa London 1866, 1871. Part II dated 1865; Part I, 1866].

Summary

Thanks CD for subscribing to the Cybele Hibernica.

Reports some observations made on the common buffaloes of India seen swimming and diving in 12ft of floodwater in order to crop the herbage beneath.

Summary

Bad month of sickness. John Chapman’s ice bag on spine.

Does not quite agree with JDH about Lubbock’s plagiarism charges. Lyell’s memory must have failed him.

Summary

No one believes in Karsten.

Surprised by CD’s observations that illegitimate crosses within a species produce hybrid-like offspring.

JDH’s scepticism of Scott’s observations.

On proposing James Hector vs Julius von Haast for Royal Society; on learned society honours.

Summary

Thanks CD for the copy of Orchids and papers on Linum and Lythrum [Collected papers 2: 93–105; 106–31].

Intends to travel to the River Itajahy and will make observations on climbing plants. Is not sure whether Dalbergia is a winding plant.

CD has changed FM’s whole perception of nature.

CD has helped him to understand distribution of coastal flora.

The vegetation on Desterro is changing.

Louis Agassiz is seeking evidence against transmutation in the distribution of the fish in the Amazon.

Summary

Has read and admires FM’s work on species.

Observations on Crustacea are good and original; asks FM to dissect and check some of CD’s observations on cirripedes.

Has sent "Climbing plants" paper [J. Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. 9 (1865): 1–118] and would like to send Orchids.

Summary

Reports that dogs caught in the act of sodomy have been attacked by their fellows, who mutilate the offender’s genitals.

Gives a description of the nature and occurrence of the wild Bos of Formosa.

Summary

Kew affairs.

H. J. Carter’s observations are wonderful but want verification.

Skeptical of H. H. Travers’ observations.

Summary

On FitzRoy’s life and character.

Carl von Siebold’s cases of males and females of gall insects [True parthenogenesis in moths and bees (1857)]. Each sex produced on different plants.

Haeckel’s astonishing case of propagation in a Medusa.

Summary

"Climbing plants" sent off.

Encourages JDH to include notes on gradation of important characters in Genera plantarum or to write a paper on the subject. Has given prominence to gradation of unimportant characters in climbing plants. Believes that it is common for the same part in an individual plant to be in different states. Same may be true of important parts – for example position of ovule may differ.

Two articles in last Natural History Review interested him; "Colonial floras" [n.s. 5 (1865): 46–63]

and "Sexuality of cryptogams" [n.s. 5 (1865): 64–79].

Fact of similarity of orders in tropics is extremely curious. Thinks it may be connected with glacial destruction.

Leo Lesquereux says he is a convert for the curious reason that CD’s books make birth of Christ and redemption by grace so clear to him!

"Not one question [for JDH] in this letter!"

Summary

Reforms at Kew.

X Club Dinner. H. B. Wilson and J. W. Colenso as guests.

Troubled by Lubbock’s going into Parliament – loss to science.

Has written to Busk.

Sending Botanische Zeitung.

Summary

Thanks CD for his photograph.

Sends a paper ["Über das Holz einiger um Desterro wachsender Kletterpflanzen", Botanische Zeitung 24 (1866): 57–60, 65–9].

Believes species of sponge with different mineral spiculae are descended from a form with organic spiculae.

Reports observations on motions of Linum stalks following the sun.

Regards Anelasma as a connecting form between cirripedes and Rhizocephala.

Summary

Praises CD’s theory.

Comments on criticism of CD’s work by Duke of Argyll.

Beauty in nature as caused by sexual selection.

Summary

Discusses "Climbing plants" and his own abstract of it.

CD should publish results of self-fertilising dimorphic plants.

Summary

On novels he has been reading: Eliot, Richardson, etc.

On Wallace, the Reader, and anthropology.

Summary

Forwards H. T. Stainton letter for reply.

Finds many Cucurbita have tendrils with sticking ends.

The "potentiality of so many organs in plants to play so many parts is one of the most wonderful of your discoveries . . . one day it will itself play a prodigious part in the interpretation of both morphological and physiological facts".

Is disgusted with Sabine’s address [see 4708] because of its mutilation of what JDH wrote.

THH’s slashing leader in Reader ["Science and ""Church policy"" ", 4 (1864): 821] – as usual he destroys all in his path.

Encloses letter from G. H. K. Thwaites with a message for CD [see encl].

Summary

On FitzRoy’s suicide.

The Lyell–Ramsay disagreement [on formation of lakes?].